


the world is so inconceivable

by amurderof



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Self-cest, Threesome - M/M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-12 07:36:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5657992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amurderof/pseuds/amurderof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dalish lets out a peal of laughter that pulls both Dorian and Bull's attention to the group huddled opposite them. Krem and Dalish flank Pavus while he gestures overdramatically and seem to be humoring him if the size of their smiles are any indication, and Skinner doesn't look like she wants to shiv anyone. It's nearly sweet.</p><p>"I think they like him more than me," Dorian says, in what he trusts is an aloof, airy manner, and not at all bitterly.</p><p>"I think he likes them more than you do," Bull replies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world is so inconceivable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neomeruru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neomeruru/gifts).



> HAPPY HOLIDAYS LINDSAY, YOU'RE THE BEST

"Are you _really_?" Sera asks, voice breathless and still too-loud in the revelation that's followed his — no, the stranger's, the _impostor's_ — appearance. "All messed up with your own magic again?"

 _What do you mean "again"?_ Dorian's already halfway to asking, rolling his shoulders back and tipping his head up, opening his mouth — when the impostor _laughs_ , laughs and smiles so easily that it makes something within Dorian's chest seize painfully. Delightful. His heart will simply give out. _Unfortunately everything you've fought for in your entire life will be for naught when you decide at some point in the future to fuck it all up and send yourself back to terrify your younger self to death._

"I don't _mess up_ , Sera," the impostor says, and his smile colors the words, and he doesn't at all posture when he says it, and Dorian knows that the man before him is utterly foreign. A stranger. This simply can't... And then the man turns to Dorian and his smile goes soft around the edges, indulgent and what Dorian wishes desperately were patronizing. "Oh, look at me. What year is it? I'd forgotten how young I looked."

“It's 9:42 Dragon," Adaar pipes up helpfully, because _she's_ enraptured with this turn of events, it would appear. Dorian half-expects her to turn to him at any moment and harangue him for never telling her time magic could be applied so frivolously, for the delight of everyone in the room save Dorian himself. "Where — _when_ are you from?"

"Oh, just ages past," the imposter replies, and he lifts a hand to his chin and scrutinizes Dorian. Dorian has to fight off the urge to step back, or turn and leave. What kind of friend would he be were he to leave Sera and Rae to this — well, to what is clearly a demon. Clearly. _Obviously._

"I'm finding the Seeker. If no one else here sees the danger involved in standing about with our tongues lolling out of our mouths, then I will need to take the initiative to protect the future of the Inquisition."

And _that_ gives him the excuse he needs to — not flee, blessed Andraste, he's not the kind of man who flees from any such thing. But to extricate himself from what will surely be an increasingly troublesome conversation.

Ha. Troublesome. _Troublesome._

He finds Cassandra walloping one of the training dummies in the courtyard, and it's only as he arrives and she lowers her sword that he realizes he has to now explain why he requires her unique talents.

"Shit," he says with feeling, and she lifts one of her naturally perfect brows (oh, he despises her) and purses her lips.

 

==

 

"I wasn't sure I believed you," she tells him later, and he lowers his head to his hands.

"Yes, well," he replies articulately, and allows her to buy him a drink.

 

==

 

Sera explains to him the whole of it from outside the library window he sits near. He won't say that he's been avoiding her, or anyone in particular, but she's made it apparent she finds the impostor's presence an absolute joy, and Dorian's uninterested in partaking of that particular experience.

So she does that thing that she tends to do, and chucks a malformed biscuit through the window near where he sits in the library, and as he picks crumbs from his hair she provides him with information he isn’t in the least interested in hearing.

"So you're a bit of a bigwig, but not in a stuffed shirt sort of way. No more than you are already." She hooks her hands over the windowsill and leans back, chewing on her bottom lip. He beats down the bright impulse of concern that she'll tumble off and land sixty feet below. He's not her minder.

"Andraste's tits, that's confusing," she continues. "It's not hard when it's just you or it's just _you_ , but I think about the two of you and _smack_ , my headfloss starts pounding like I've drunk too much. That why you're avoiding you?"

"I'm not avoiding—" Though he barely gets that line out before she's blinking slowly at him, and he has to reassess his line of reasoning: "I've much to do with my time beyond hanging on the every word of a man who may or may not be myself from the future."

Sera rolls her eyes. "Well, then I s'pose you won't care where he headed after, huh."

"In that, you would be correct. I care not one whit."

"Right," Sera says, and nods. "Then I'm heading back, 'cuz I can't wait to see the look on Bull's face when he realizes there are two of you."

And damn her, she clambers down the roof and leaves him to reach all of the available horrifying conclusions on his own.

 

==

 

“There, at least _someone’s_ considering this state of affairs logically.”

Dorian didn’t make it in time to see what occurred when the impostor — oh, that’s childish, he should call him… _Pavus_ — when Pavus swanned into the Herald’s Rest and caught the assembled unaware. So he has to make do with sitting at Bull's side on one end of the table while Pavus regales the Chargers with stories from their apparent futures.

"Yeah, logically," Bull replies, and frowns before he takes another swig of his ale. His brow hasn't unfurrowed since Dorian joined him, and it's taking most of Dorian’s honed self-control not to smooth it out with his thumb. "The Seeker did her thing though?"

Dorian grimaces. "Both she and our dear Commander ran him through his paces. He veritably _bleeds_ magic, but nothing untoward."

"Aside from time magic itself."

"Yes, aside from time magic itself. Which, I'll remind you, both the Inquisitor and I have fallen victim to in the past."

Bull lifts an eyebrow and Dorian lets out a sigh. "That was not intended to sound like any manner of acceptance of this situation. Or approval. Or belief that he is anything other than a demon plying its tricks on us."

Dalish lets out a peal of laughter that pulls both Dorian and Bull's attention to the group huddled opposite them. Krem and Dalish flank Pavus while he gestures overdramatically and seem to be humoring him if the size of their smiles are any indication, and Skinner doesn't look like she wants to shiv anyone. It's nearly sweet.

"I think they like him more than me," Dorian says, in what he trusts is an aloof, airy manner, and not at all bitterly.

"I think he likes them more than you do," Bull replies, and before Dorian can protest, loops an arm around Dorian's waist in a nigh successful attempt to distract him from the weight of that comment, most likely. Damnit.

Pavus glances up from his adoring fans and... smiles, genuine and plain, down at the both of them. Bull's hand at Dorian's waist tightens just enough to notice, and Dorian's tongue feels too large for his mouth.

Pavus excuses himself with a friendly clasp on Krem and Dalish's shoulders and maneuvers to Dorian and Bull's end of the table, where he looks them over with a too-long gaze. "It's... six months now, isn't it?"

"You've been here for a handful of hours," Dorian mutters under his breath, but Bull, as always, is unable to leave someone's inquiry unfulfilled.

"Give or take a couple days."

Bull's hand feels heavy at Dorian's waist.

"There's a tendency to romanticize the past," Pavus says, and he glances down at Bull's hold on Dorian, and it's unnerving, how Dorian doesn't feel the usual stifled shame he still actively combats. He does feel... _seen_ , though, and for the first time since this ridiculousness was thrust upon him does he allow himself to contemplate that this man may be... is, sweet Maker, _is_ himself, from some unknown future, and what _that_ could possibly entail—

"Don't overthink it," Pavus says in a calming tone of voice that reminds Dorian damningly of Bull's. "I don't want to make your lives harder than I already have, by merely showing up here. But until I work with Dagna to diagnose what exactly has stopped working in my locket, we should try and coexist peaceably, shouldn't we?"

"Cullen and Cassandra checked him out?" Bull asks Dorian again, and Dorian nods.

"As far as anyone is able to surmise, he is indeed... me."

"Oh, don't scowl so," Pavus chides, a warm smile on his face. "Laughter lines are infinitely preferable to frown lines. Though Bull insists that I have only become more handsome in my old age, like unto a fine wine."

Dorian was unaware it was possible for one's stomach to drop into one's boots at the same time that one felt one's horizons suddenly stretch forward for miles unceasingly.

Pavus frowns down at them, and then closes his eyes as though pained. "Oh, shit."

 

==

 

“So I think we can both agree that was weird.”

“ _Weird_ ,” Dorian says with what he feels is the appropriate amount of chagrin, and leans back into Bull’s wandering hands, which come to a stop at the small of Dorian’s back and the side of his neck. “Yes. Yes, that was weird. And it will apparently continue to be so until Dagna can sort things out with — _him_.”

Bull laughs behind him, and the strength of it shudders through Dorian’s body. “He’s not too bad, huh? Just a bit… older.”

Dorian huffs, and allows himself to close his eyes. Would but they cease talking about this, and go wherever Bull’s hands lead them.

“And more self-assured. Handsome, too.”

Dorian tenses, and Bull laughs again.

"Sorry, sorry." Bull drags his thumb in circles against the base of Dorian’s skull, just under his ear. "He really rubs you the wrong way, huh?"

Dorian sighs, and tightens his arms across his chest. "I don't trust him to be who he says he is, if that's what you mean."

"Nah," Bull replies easily, and Dorian feels the brush of Bull's lips against the crown of his head. Sweet. Always, enduringly sweet. As usual, Dorian considers protesting, and lets the objection sit behind his breastbone until it passes. "I think you know he's you, in ten? Twenty years? He's got crow's feet."

Dorian stops himself just in time from saying, _And an ease about him I never expect to have._ Says instead, "Even if we were to operate under the delusion that he were, in fact, me, then we would need to entertain the idea that everything he says is the truth, including that you and I…”

Bull's hands tense against Dorian's skin for just a moment, just long enough to notice, and Dorian bites his tongue against any number of excuses he could give for that clumsy display, for the desperate hope that bled into his tone.

"Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty..." Bull chuckles. "That's a doozy."

"Yes, a _doozy_ ," Dorian says, and turns around to face Bull directly. The back of his neck feels abruptly cold, and the strange weight of this conversation settles leadenly in his stomach without Bull's steadying grip. "And his immediate fraternization with the Chargers. That doesn't strike you as unnatural? He's some sort of — some sort of _desire demon_ , who's placed itself within an interesting predicament in order to insinuate its way into the Inquisition."

Bull frowns for only a moment, and then his expression clears into damnable neutrality. "Not an envy demon?"

"Fine, or an envy demon, yes, they can shapeshift—"

"You said a desire demon," Bull interrupts, and Dorian draws the inside of his lip between his teeth and bites down until it hurts.

He did, didn't he. Oh Maker fucking damnit.

"A desire demon, planted here to drum up strife and frustration within the ranks," Dorian says, but he can hear how forced the words seem even as they leave his mouth.

"Or he's you," Bull says, and he lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "Fifteen years out and—"

"And happy," Dorian says, because he refuses to hear the words from Bull's mouth. "Happy, and charmingly friendly, and _beloved_ , apparently. Apparently." That last word comes out a bit brittle, and he bites down on his tongue to keep himself from making this any worse. He looks in the general vicinity of Bull's sternum, and the two of them are silent until Bull finally shifts in place, and raises a hand to cup Dorian's chin.

 _Do not reassure me_ , Dorian thinks viciously. But Bull only lifts his gaze until their eyes meet, and draws his thumb across Dorian's skin.

"Let's give him a break then, if he's you. Maybe you and him can work with Dagna together. Get him back home to his people as soon as possible."

And what should be patronizing warms Dorian to his bones.

 

==

 

Dorian… reconsiders Pavus. He must, after all: if Pavus is going to be at Skyhold, then it’s foolish for Dorian to treat him with such disdain.

 _Or pragmatic and intelligent_ , some part of him thinks irritably, and he breathes in slowly and — let’s himself treat it as Bull would. Feel it, and then let it go. It is simply nonsensical that every other denizen of Skyhold would be duped by Pavus, and Dorian alone would be the one who managed skepticism. And as Bull said…

He won’t seek out Pavus, as it were, but he no longer shies from his presence. They share the library, with Pavus remarking with fond nostalgia on the collection of books Dorian has been curating, and making suggestions with such an enraptured tone to his voice that Dorian doesn’t take offense at it.

They share time at the Herald’s Rest as well, Pavus sitting with the Chargers each evening with a quietly pleased look on his face that takes some time for Dorian to identify: his features relaxed, shoulders rounded, elbows on the table.

"You look... content," Dorian observes one such night, and Pavus smiles. It’s a bit odd, to watch oneself, or some version of oneself, smile. Odd, yet comforting.

Pavus doesn't look away from the Chargers and Bull. "It's been some time since I've since the Iron Bull in person."

The warmth seeping through every inch of Dorian's frame snaps back jarringly, and knots into a cold and heavy weight between his lungs. "Oh."

Pavus glances at him, and while there's humor in his voice his smile bends patient, his eyes softening. "You misunderstand me. He is in high spirits, and as fighting a form as a man his age is allowed to be. The two of us simply find ourselves on opposite ends of Thedas, much of the time."

"I wasn't." But Dorian lets the sentence fade there, because he isn't sure what the protest was intended to be. Because of course he was. For one unsettling moment Dorian thought that Bull was — dead, or gone, or any number of wretched things. And instead, they are simply parted.

"Not ideal still," Pavus continues, and he lifts a hand to press against the silk over his sternum, under which lies what must be some sort of amulet. A reminder, perhaps. A token.

The weight between Dorian's chest takes a terrible turn towards… _yearning_ , and he forces himself to look out across the tavern and to breathe, slowly.

"But it’s a situation I'm willing to endure, given my firm knowledge as a younger man I would never have such an opportunity in the first place."

Dorian swallows, and reaches for his ale. He drinks, and for one brief moment, he wonders yet again if this is some sort of ploy. Some sort of cruel joke played upon him, to convince him that perhaps he’s allowed this.

Or instead — and this claws at his chest and fills the spaces left behind, a feeling he wishes would leave him immediately — it is true, and real, and he _is_ allowed it. His own imperfect future, full of more than he’d ever expected once he was old enough to understand how the world worked.

"How expressly shitty," Dorian says, and Pavus barks out a laugh.

"Yes. Yes, I quite agree."

 

==

 

And so things settle, as it were, and Dorian joins Pavus in working with Dagna to restore Pavus’s locket. Dagna has accepted the situation as another facet of the fantastic mystery that is magic, and the three of them make some manner of progress — or at least Pavus seems to think so.

Pavus takes to carousing nightly in the tavern, sitting within distance of Bull’s booming laugh, save for those evenings Dorian passes him curled up in the chair Rae had brought up for him in the library. Dorian can only imagine that Pavus has _read_ all of these books before, but perhaps he finds the familiarity comforting. Similar to the Bull, perhaps.

When the Chargers are sent out on an excursion to the Temple of Sacred Ashes, Pavus joins Dorian on the wall. Once the company has hiked into the col near the base of Skyhold’s resident peak, Pavus mumbles something about returning to the forge, and squeezes Dorian’s shoulder in passing. Dorian watches him go and wonders, with a painfully curious clarity, how many times Pavus has watched Bull disappear from view.

It doesn’t make the wait any less obnoxious, to know he’s not the only one impatiently awaiting Bull’s return.

When Dorian hears the ruckus heralding the Chargers’ return, raised voices and armor clanking up the mountain, he returns to the wall to find Pavus already there, face blank as he surveys the snowbanks.

The both of them are silent, until they lock onto Bull’s form in the distance.

“I will never tire of the sight,” Pavus says softly, the words nearly lost to the wind.

“How fortunate that his silhouette is so recognizable,” Dorian says, because he still isn’t sure what else to say, when faced with a man who seems just as affected by Bull’s absence and return.

When the Chargers crowd through the gates, Bull cuffs one of them — Bucket, if Dorian recalls, a squirrely elf if ever there were one — and searches the courtyard, and then lifts his gaze to the fortress walls.

Dorian hasn’t a chance to keep the smile from his face, when Bull catches sight of him and waves one of his massive hands in greeting.

Next to him, one of Pavus’s hands raises from the edge of the parapet and then drops back to the stone. “Are you going to keep him waiting?” he asks, and Dorian hears the performance to it — the practiced indifference, the implication that Pavus doesn’t care.

“His arm will fall off if I do,” Dorian replies, and waves his hand above his head because — well, someone should. He can hear Bull’s pleased shout from across the courtyard, and his warm laugh when Dorian sets off with some speed towards the stairwell.

 

==

 

Dorian won't believe that the idea occurs to him first, because Bull is clever, and thoughtful, and — unbelievably horny. Dorian wouldn't take a bet that Bull's never thought about Dorian somehow duplicating himself _without_ time magic being involved. But with time magic? And a legitimate second version of himself?

"You keep glancing between me and him," Bull says, under his breath so no one at the table pays them any mind — it's the same manner in which Bull will list the things he plans to do to Dorian later once they're alone, and their colleagues are quite used to tuning it out.

"Yes, well," Dorian says uselessly, and then glances between the two of them again.

Pavus is listening rapturously as Sera and Adaar recount some absurd version of the events that befell them on their first dragon hunt, with Sera throwing out her arms and caterwauling while Adaar does a passable impression of Bull, exhilarated glee and all.

"He and I have talked at some length. I understand him, at least to the smallest of degrees."

"And I get looped into this how?" Bull lowers his head closer to the table so he can look up at Dorian from underneath his brow, and takes a swig of his ale.

Dorian could swear that Bull knows exactly what he's thinking.

"He and — you," Dorian hesitates, because it's been simple to divorce himself from Pavus, a clear delineation starting at their differences in hair and escalating to the relaxed roll of Pavus's shoulders as he sits at the table and laughs outright at Sera's ribaldry. But he hasn't spent the same effort in separating Bull, the Bull who now sits at his side and looks fairly smug at Dorian's verbal fumblings, and the Bull that Pavus must know — older, more scarred surely, with greying stubble and the confidence that must come from being Tal-Vashoth for so long and retaining one's faculties.

Dorian forces himself to plow ahead. "He spends his days in Tevinter, clearly. Look at his robes. That's not what one wears adventuring."

Bull looks considering. "So I..."

"So the Iron Bull of whatever-year Dragon is obviously not in Tevinter with him. It would be undeniably foolish for him to be, and I would not allow it." Bull is on the verge of opening his mouth to protest, Dorian can _sense_ it, and so he presses on, "And I imagine he must miss him. You. I imagine he must miss you."

Bull rests his hand over the mouth of his tankard, curling his fingers until his nails tap against its sides. He looks at Dorian as though there’s no separation between Dorian’s thoughts and his own, as though he can see immediately through him.

It’s — intimate, that look.

It doesn’t make Dorian uncomfortable, which remains discomfiting in and of itself.

“Is this permission?” Bull asks, and Dorian swallows. Fists his hands on the table — and unclenches them when Bull's eyes are drawn away from his face and to them, instead.

"I've no expectation of," Dorian starts, and he swallows again, Bull's eyes trained back on his face. That gaze again.

Dorian trails a finger through a puddle of spilled beer on the table between them, and Bull lays one of his hands palm-up next to it. Within distance — an opportunity, but one intended not to crowd Dorian. Dorian's become used to such actions.

He turns his own hand and brushes his knuckles against the side of Bull's, and steels himself. "You can't say you aren't _curious_."

Bull lifts a brow and nudges his hand against Dorian's, and from the look on his face hears what Dorian leaves unsaid:

 _Because I am_.

 

==

 

Pavus's laugh jars Dorian momentarily, a tone that matches his own perfectly.

"I'm not an unselfish man," Pavus says with a curl of his lips, and Dorian finds himself charmed, in spite of himself. Because of himself.

"No buggering shit," Dorian says, and Pavus laughs.

Sitting this close to him, willingly and without an ulterior motive to catch any hints of the demonic, Dorian can note the differences between them. Can appreciate them, as it were.

Pavus's hair is long and streaked with grey, tied loosely behind his head in a bun that Dorian has a strange urge to lop off. The style of a man who’s in no danger of a combatant getting a hold of it, and using it against him.

Pavus has reading spectacles that Dorian's seen, brought out from an inner pocket of his robes when Josephine requested that the man review several of her more active treatises for weaknesses to resolve and exploit.

And the robes — though Pavus hasn't said anything of the sort, Dorian suspects he's a magister now, Halward dead and the seat fallen to him. The robes are those of a Tevinter with money and power, and a taste for rebellion: white robes in the Magisterium must make him rather distinctive.

Pavus leans back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. He'd insisted that Dorian accompany him to the lower library in Skyhold, something about how he missed the particular combination of ancient dust and cobwebs he had only ever experienced there. "This is odd, isn't it."

Dorian resettles against one of the shelves. "You're only now noticing."

"It's less odd to enjoy myself in the company of my friends, regardless of their age. I consider it an unfortunately-rare occurrence. But I'm sure you will appreciate the strangeness inherent in speaking directly with myself, about such a topic."

"Oh, yes," Dorian agrees dryly, and Pavus chuckles.

"I couldn't help but overhear your conversation with the Iron Bull the other evening," Pavus continues, and Dorian is glad for the weight behind him.

Of course it was only a matter of time before he himself breached the topic, but he hadn't expected it from the interloper.

"Perhaps you could fill me in on your conclusions. I'm not sure you discussed them in the tavern."

Dorian does not blush, in so many words, but he does take some time to clear his throat —

_“D'you want to watch me fuck him?” Bull asks, breath hot against Dorian's ear, and Dorian digs his nails into the meat of Bull's shoulders._

— and manages, "Not the entirety of them, no," and when Pavus laughs, it doesn't feel mocking. It's... fond.

“He has such a creative mind, doesn’t he.” Pavus closes his eyes and his smile turns soft. Dear.

Dorian opens his mouth to say something light, and droll, and wittily scandalous, and what his traitorous mouth lets out is instead, "You've been together, the two of you. This whole time."

Pavus leans forward in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle, and his voice is warm, his words slow. As though Dorian were a deer set to startle.

“I have been accordingly blessed,” he says, with a smile shaping his face that Dorian isn’t sure how to read. How to accept as a genuine foretelling of his future. “Obviously, we’ve had our share of troubles. But it is, ultimately, what I had hoped to have as a child.”

Dorian’s mouth is dry when he attempts to speak, to say anything, to question this — beautiful absurdity. The least likely aspect of an entirely illogical event. “Oh,” is what he finally says, like an utter arse, and Pavus laughs kindly at him, and invites him to accompany him to dinner.

 

==

 

Pavus settles himself next to Bull at the table, the closest he’s been to the man, Dorian thinks, since he arrived.

Pavus watches Dorian’s face for a long moment — Dorian has no idea of what he makes obvious to that frustratingly observant gaze — and then turns to Bull.

“It _was_ an invitation, wasn’t it?”

Bull shifts beside Dorian, and looks to him.

Dorian drags his teeth over the inside of his bottom lip, and exhales.

 

==

 

In Bull’s room, Pavus rests his hand against his chin and furrows his brow in overly dramatic consideration. “I wonder,” he says, with rounded tones, “if when I return, Bull will recall this evening.” He drops his hand, and the smile that curves up his mouth is wicked. “Let's make it memorable."

Bull snorts a laugh next to Dorian, and Dorian nearly smacks his arm, to scold him for — _encouraging_ Pavus. For encouraging _this_. Except Dorian's the one who proposed it in the first place, which is to say that obviously Pavus agreed. They were of one mind.

"Kaffas," Dorian mutters, and Pavus steps forward and reaches for Bull.

 

==

 

Dorian has found jealousy a strange bedfellow in the past. There was little point to it in Tevinter, when one's lover may be married, or one dalliance among many, or someone you paid for the evening. There was no illusion of belonging, and thus no real basis for such an emotion.

He's flirted with jealousy quite jarringly in the south, when one of Bull's flings would make themselves available to him, or — mortifyingly — when Bull would sink into an evening with the Chargers and not have the time for Dorian after it.

There is both the basis for jealousy here, now, and the immediate dissolution of it. Why be jealous of oneself, in the moment?

"Let me look at you," Pavus breathes out, lifting himself up onto his toes and running his hands over Bull's shoulders, his neck, up to his horns. "It's strange to think we were ever the both of us so young.”

Bull huffs a laugh, the roll of his shoulders unsettling Pavus's hands. "Think about how _we_ feel," he says, and glances at Dorian — and then looks again, longer, until heat suffuses Dorian's chest. "Bit of a kick in the pants, you showing up here."

"Yes, yes, I shouldn't have said anything about your futures," Pavus agrees breezily, and he reaches up again and bends his fingers, dragging his nails across the base of one of Bull's horns.

Bull's eyes go wide and then drift closed, and Dorian watches him lean into the touch, the long bend of his back as he ducks low enough that Pavus can sink back onto the soles of his feet.

"Be a dear and divest the Iron Bull of his trousers, would you," Pavus says after several long moments in which Dorian finds himself enraptured with the rise and fall of Bull's curving shoulders.

"Fuck," Bull exhales, and Dorian swallows a laugh when he moves behind him, reaching around him to untie the rope that keeps his abysmal trousers up.

He’s no stranger to the wide stretch of Bull’s back, or even the freckled curve of his arse, but there’s something to be said for it filling the breadth of his vision, seeing the manner in which his shoulders rise and fall when he’s kissed.

He presses his palms to the dip of Bull’s back, warm against his fingers, and Bull hums low and leans back into the touch.

 

==

 

Pavus has a tender way about him.

Dorian has long-abandoned the hesitant lie that what he and Bull have is nothing but two men enjoying themselves and each other. But still, there’s an emotion in Pavus’s every movement, a _caring_ to it that Dorian has heard Bull claim him to have, but — nothing like this.

Nothing like the slow caress of each hand across Bull’s chest, or the slow curve around Bull’s horn. Not the way that Pavus looks Bull in the eye, and maintains that contact when he leans in for another kiss. When he leads Bull by the hand to the bed.

“Dorian,” Bull says.

Dorian watches Pavus react to the name, on Bull’s lips, even while Bull looks across the room towards Dorian.

“This isn’t simply a show?” Dorian asks. Swallows when his voice creaks.

“C’mere, sweetheart,” Bull says, and Dorian tears his eyes away from Pavus to take in Bull’s low-lidded gaze, the stretch of his smile.

Tender.

 

==

 

“—astride his chest,” Pavus is saying, and Dorian does his best to ignore the warring emotions of embarrassment and anticipation while he does as directed.

Bull grins up at him, hooking both hands over Dorian’s thighs, and rubbing his thumbs into the leather of Dorian’s trousers. “Good view.”

Pavus laughs, and Dorian can hear him working with Bull’s boots and brace. “The view is all mine, as it were. Tell me, Dorian, you’ve never had a chance to watch his face, have you?”

“What?” Dorian frowns and glances over his shoulder. That he flushes at the sight before him — Bull’s bare, thick thighs, pink at the knee where the brace had rested; his full cock, curving up against his stomach already, precome beading at the tip; and Pavus, reaching for it, looping his fingers around the base — is coincidental. He’s only human, after all.

“Watch him,” Pavus prompts again, and Dorian tears himself away from the sight of Pavus’s mouth widening around the purpling head of Bull’s cock.

Dorian draws his bottom lip between his teeth, and Bull curses low, digging his fingertips into Dorian’s legs. Stares up at Dorian — oh, the weight of that gaze. Dorian can barely stand it. Has to lean forward to swallow down every moan that bleeds past Bull’s lips.

He hesitates when pulling away from the kiss, arms flat on either side of Bull’s head, and watches Bull’s expression twist. The way his mouth forms around soundless words, how his eye starts to drift closed when every muscle in him goes taut — but not entirely, staying open enough that he keeps looking up at Dorian. Keeps looking up at Dorian when he curses and reaches back with one of his hands, and Dorian hears Pavus’s muffled moan as Bull comes with a shout.

Bull shudders beneath him. Dorian watches emotions cascade across his face and leans forward again, pressing their foreheads together.

“Show me what you just did,” Dorian says breathlessly, his eyes crossing from the proximity, keeping Bull’s gaze; and while Pavus chuckles, Bull huffs out a low _please, Dorian,_ fuck.

 

==

 

“Kiss him,” Dorian says, and Pavus lifts a brow. “Oh, you know why.” He’s nearly not flustered, sitting on the mattress next to Bull, his blood aflame with the touch of Bull’s hand at his hip.

Pavus chuckles, and settles on Bull’s other side, and kisses him. Lets Bull taste his own spend. A bit filthy, but Bull’s low moan is predictable, and the way his hold tightens on Dorian is welcome.

 

==

 

“Something he won’t tell you,” Pavus says airily, as though they’re discussing the weather, or Ferelden politics, “is how much he enjoys being told what to do.”

Bull snorts, and the vibration from it rolls down his arms, reverberates in the hand clenched around Dorian’s hip, in the fingers teasing him open. “Think I know that one.”

“Oh no,” Pavus replies, and if Dorian could lift his head from the pillow in front of him, he’d look back to take in the cause of Bull’s sudden, sharp breath. Why Bull goes so deliciously taut behind him. “I meant you, amatus.”

 _Fuck_ , Dorian thinks, and moans against the pillow, the endearment lodging itself in the back of his mind.

 

==

 

“Arch your back,” Pavus whispers into Dorian’s ear, and Dorian follows the command without putting thought into it, tipping his head back until he’s gazing up at the roof with half-lidded eyes.

“Your hand, Bull.”

And Bull’s hand curves around the front of his neck, digging his fingertips into Dorian’s skin.

“Kaffas,” Dorian chokes out, and Bull curses below him, and slides his hand around Dorian’s erection.

 

==

 

“Pretty sure I’m dreaming,” Bull mutters, and Dorian snorts into the meat of his shoulder.

Pavus hums, from Bull’s other side, held close to Bull’s chest. “Oh, needs more qunari.”

“Or you two making out,” Bull says, and when Dorian lifts his head to catch Pavus’s eye, Bull breathes in sharply:

“Oh, fuck. Fuck. Yeah.”

 

==

 

Dorian’s teetering on the edge between sleep and wakefulness when he feels the bed shudder, not enough to herald Bull’s departure, but noticeable. There are a handful of low murmured words, followed by the brush of a kiss.

Dorian shifts and blearily looks up at — himself, _Pavus_ , who laughs soundlessly and leans over him, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Sleep. It’s positively frigid, and none I’ve met are as warm as Bull.”

Dorian reaches up and grabs at Pavus’s — his upper arm, gets a handful of dark silk. “You’re…” Dorian tries to think through his words, but the bed is comfortable, and Bull is warm, and if Pavus is real, and honest, then. Well.

“You’re allowed this, Dorian,” Pavus says, the damnable fondness on his face again — and then he frowns. “Maker, that sounds bizarre.”

And Dorian has to muffle his laughter, a fucking jubilant feeling bubbling up from his chest, to let Bull sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! i'd love to hear what you thought, either in a comment below or [on tumblr](http://amurderof.tumblr.com/ask)!


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